Growing up is hard to do

The game this weekend was League (re) Union.

The 'indy band' album cover shot - somehow spontaneous and posed at the same time...

"No, let's just get a picture of the three middle-aged men" said Mary with unusual reticence after we invited she and Rose to join us in a group photograph.
She was right though, the shadow of fifty is cast across us much like the one from Jonty's nose was in the ensuing photographs (banter, guys)  - and we weren't even fift-EEN when we met.

3 unwise men...

The writer, the actor and the artist encountered each other amid the 'Disco and Death Star' final years of the 1970s, and formed strong bonds through the metamorphic years of secondary school. We dabbled in each other's disciplines: treading boards, sketch books and creative writing with varying degrees of success but consistent enthusiasm. And it was this last area, the literary arena, which caused enough laughter this weekend for me to literally have to pass around tissues for a roomful of 'adults' to staunch their tears of mirth.
As I've mentioned before; not being the cool kids, we did more science outside of school than we did within - and even wrote up reports about our astronomy club (the 'STAR League') viewing sessions. Spanning 1981-1986 and recorded in four volumes now known as the astrobooks, these accounts became invaluable commentaries on our times together, at times crassly naive but also possessing a pure, almost virginal outlook untainted by experience and cynicism.  (And maturity and intelligence at times, but that hasn't changed as this weekend amply demonstrated.)  And it was these recently restored journals which generated enough screams and roars of hilarity to ensure that it wasn't until Monday when all our cats tentatively returned.

'Astrobooks' (and ancient photo albums) all got a good going over...

Stretching the abundant patience of our wives, who also appear within those pages, the weekend was something of a regression to those early years, complete with a Sunday Horror (on Saturday night), a trek through farmland to take a variety of group photographs (which will hopefully always bring as much future amusement as the the thirty year old ones in the Astrobooks), and finally a viewing session of a perfect night sky at the very end.

Cheers! (again)

This blog has never been intended as a diary, so I'll let these images speak for themselves. And I'll close by stealing a wonderfully apt quotation which Jonty used in his online summing up of the weekend:
"One day chums
Having a laugh a minute
One day comes
And they're a part of your lives" ….for over three decades!

And what's a summery afternoon without some frisbee 'action'?